Protein with nutritious, health and functional aspects have become a very important segment of the food industry in the last decade as the understanding of the benefits of the right type and amount of protein in ones diet has become better understood. Traditional sources of protein have been egg, whey and plant based proteins such as soy. As protein supplementation finds its way into a greater variety of foods, the demand for unique nutritional and functional qualities in proteins has increased. The health food industry has acknowledged the benefits of flax for quite some time. Traditionally the entire flaxseed has been used in variety of food applications, and more recently the flax oil has been extracted by a method of cold press, which maintains the integrity of the nutritional benefits of the oils. The byproduct of this cold press is either discarded or sold as flax meal into feed applications. Flax meal is a flake-like material that is produced as a byproduct of cold-pressing flaxseed to produce flax oil. Flax meal contains approximately 36% protein, 10% fat, 9% moisture, 5% ash, and the balance carbohydrate.
The extraction of flax protein concentrate from flax meal presents problems that are unique to extracting protein from oilseeds. In the past, extracting flax protein from flax meal has been difficult as flax meal is highly viscous when solubilized making it very difficult to process. Accordingly, as the demand for unique proteins increases, there is a need for a commercially practical process to extract flax protein concentrate from flax meal.